Computer systems create, store, modify, and/or delete various data sets referred to herein as “entities.” Different versions of a same data set may be referred to herein as different entities. An entity may refer to, for example, a digital file, a data object, a data structure, or a data set. A particular entity may be generated based on another entity. Additionally or alternatively, a first version of a particular entity may be generated based on a second version of the particular entity.
Provenance data includes information on the historical derivation of one or more entities in a computer system or application. Provenance data indicates which entities were derived from a particular entity, which activities were performed on and/or generated a particular entity, and which agents performed the activities on a particular entity.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.